Innovations in management accounting research and practice: Whatever happened to Throughput Accounting?

摘要

Despite the identification of the potential to undertake scholarly research inThroughput Accounting (TA) (Noreen et al, 1995; Dugdale & Jones, 1998; Jones& Dugdale, 1998), to date there has been a paucity of published studies of TA.This paper argues that TA, and the production management system it supports –the Theory of Constraints (TOC) are fads/fashions in accordance withAbrahamson’s (1996) framework and posits that negative connotations regardingthe term fads/fashions along with the likening of management fads/fashions toaesthetic fads/fashions could be likely reasons for the lack of scholarly interestfrom accounting researchers. Furthermore, this paper extends the managementfads/fashions literature by extending the debate to include accounting academicsand research networks. It is argued that accounting researchers, accountingresearch agendas and accounting research networks can be deemed to befads/fashions as they exhibit many of the characteristics of managementfads/fashions including, lifecycles, rhetoric and gurus. Such a classificationhowever, does not rule out the potential for theoretically sound scholarly research,rather it widens the opportunities for researchers.This paper demonstrates empirically that TA is a topic worthy of inclusion inresearch agendas. TOC implementation causes several changes to managementcontrol systems and uses accounting information as the primary method ofproduction scheduling. In addition, operational staff in firms with TOC useaccounting information to plan and manage their work on a daily basis. Firmswith TOC change the way they measure and evaluate performance as well asinclude throughput information in their capital budgeting processes. It is arguedthat a firm which implements TOC will change its Management Control Systemparticularly in relation to overhead allocation and the dissemination of financialinformation to all levels of the firm. These changes are driven by an apparentparadigm shift in operational thinking by managers and staff of firms that haveimplemented TOC. Furthermore these changes are significant enough to warrantfurther investigation into TA and the processes relating to management controlsystem change. This paper concludes with some suggestions for future researchand poses some challenges to accounting scholars.